Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize.
—Wayne Dyer
Caution Instead of Fright
Due to the nature of the music industry, there are plenty of frauds and self-proclaimed professionals with bad intentions that are using the enthusiasm and the emotional characteristics of talented individuals to their benefit, so many formations are—doubtlessly, reasonably, and understandably—being extremely cautious when it comes to cooperating with personalities, companies, and taking advantage of certain opportunities related to their professional evolution. While being careful is always a necessity, an artist cannot afford to miss an eventual chance that can elevate their career due to certain prejudices. You cannot develop a successful profile in the music industry on your own, under no circumstances, regardless of how exceptional your talent is or how impeccable your professionalism and qualities are, and you cannot advance with your professional standing if you tend to deliberately neglect or purposefully avoid opportunities for potential growth. Despite the exact situation and its characteristics—you have to know that there is a person that is covering your back. Regardless of how addicted and attached you are to the concept that you are the only person who can perform your career-related activities up to the required high standards, at some point it is necessary for you to find a way to rely on other people and be in peace and comfort with the idea of being dependent on someone else. Just think about this from the following perspective—there is not a single formation that has achieved success by managing and handling their entire workload. You need people. You need their enthusiasm, their working potential, and their trust, creativity, belief, and passion in order to progress further. The music industry is full of people that want to use you and benefit from you in one way or another, so it is important to be careful and understand the dynamics between the different operations in the business in order to avoid getting yourself involved in unfavorable circumstances. However, never be skeptical. Do not allow your fears, prejudices, or reservations to damage the progress of your career because only trusting and working with other people can provide you with the opportunity to achieve personal and professional growth to the level that you are targeting with your efforts. It is necessary to be cautious, careful, and precise when it comes to taking decisions connected to your career’s evolution. You should always make sure that such decisions are not taken under any emotional or irrational influences, regardless of whether we are talking about positive or negative feelings. Interpret the signs correctly and learn to distinguish the people who are passionate to help you from the ones that are passionate to earn from you; develop and rely on your psychological understanding; and aim to comprehend human nature and ways of thinking when your activity depends on others. You have to want and feel that a working relationship would present you the results you are striving for, not merely hope that it would yield the desired results, and you should expect your prejudices to be defeated.
The Misconception about Mistakes
Mistakes and failures might be disappointing, but they are not damaging your progress in any way when it comes to the bigger picture of your journey to success. Undergoing setbacks, issues, and problems is an experience that can be easily classified as useful and helpful and incredibly beneficial for your long-term development as an artist and a person as well. Every negative situation has its own silver lining, and you can always count that the value of the learning experience that you can acquire from a situation that did not unfold according to your expectations might be more precious and important than if the opposite were to occur. Understand that every case, regardless of its nature, possesses its own advantages that you can learn and use them to improve yourself; therefore, you should learn to always extract the benefit out of the circumstances that you might be surrounded by. As soon as you acknowledge a problem or an issue, the possibility for change appears. Could you change the problem? Can you do it on your own? Facing issues is beneficial for your development, because it forces you to change and modify your thinking, to look at things from a perspective that you might not have been aware of before. You are in a position where the process of development of a skill or taking a decision is not optional and necessary and you cannot afford to put your comfort as a priority, but you should do what is necessary, regardless of whether you like the eventual resolution of the said problem or not. Such situations also can provide an artist with the most reliable information, which you can base your future decisions on—the personal experience. Doing mistakes actually might be an indication that you are moving in the right direction. People do not fail in endeavors that they are used to or comfortable with; they fail when they approach something new. Approaching new means evolution. Evolution means progress.
Yes, some chances contain the risk of failure that you might be hesitant to take, but they will most likely have the potential to help you progress and elevate your activity significantly. You do not need to feel ready, comfortable, or assured in order to take certain decisions that can ensure you a positive outcome eventually. In fact, experiencing such feelings of reservation and skepticism is only indicative that you are facing a possibility for expansion, considering that people are naturally unreceptive at first to situations, which require them to leave their comfort zone, as is something that an artist always should be willing and ambitious to achieve. In general, there is a common, well-known statistical observation that delivers a valid point—you will never hit your target if you do not shoot, so just do what you need to do, not what you want to do, and worry about the eventual consequences later, rather than focusing on them prior to their appearance. The habit of performing a preparation process preceding a certain activity is not always a beneficial method. Adjusting your mentality and mindset and equipping yourself with assets is required only when the success of the said operation depends on your preparedness, which, contrary to popular beliefs, is not what often the majority of people think. Most artists would choose to take advantage of an opportunity only when they are certain that they are in a position to approach it and when they believe that they possess all of the resources they need in order to do so. However, a concept that these people often neglect is that their perceptions are often not relevant and correct. In certain situations, you have to act fast. Sometimes, you do not need to achieve certain accomplishments, that is, to earn enough money, credentials, and connections and be completely comfortable, in order to make a move that can benefit your activity. You do not need to be ready in terms of your own understandings. You do not need reassurance, support, and persuasion to work toward a goal. Many people would not pursue their ideas and desires and perform their plans not because they are not capable of doing it but because they believe that they are not able to do so, which is a crucial misconception that an entertainment industry participant should avoid at any cost. If you cannot get over something, just go through it. You are not meant to always feel peaceful and comfortable with a situation, problem, or an obstacle that you are experiencing in order to overcome it. You just have to tackle it. Not to mention the fact that your approach in this area and in situations of this nature only showcases your professional potential and determination, and this is something that can massively increase your integrity within the music industry as well.
An artist should be well aware of the difference between the terms “fear” and “intuition.” It is a common mistake among people to misjudge the dramatic contrast between these two words, as the problems caused by the lack of understanding on the matter can be very harmful, damaging, and substantial when mixed with the highly emotional thought process that is related to the majority of the artists’ characters in general. Hence, it is needed for every person interested in developing a successful career in the music field to be capable of properly identifying their intuition and fears separately and to be able to carefully draw borders between them, especially when it comes to utilizing the aforementioned feelings in the process of taking career-oriented decisions. As opposed to the essence of the fear, intuition does not have a negative presence and stressful effect on a person, but quite the opposite as a matter of fact. It provides the person with the comfortable feeling of certainty, based on previous experiences that might have been buried deep down in our consciousness. Intuition is actually a reaction that is way more than an instinct—it is the sense of a feeling, plus a rational consideration. Very briefly said, fear presents itself as negative emotion acting through different physical reactions. Meanwhile, intuition is the visceral guidance that a person receives subconsciously when needed. Fear is the negative feeling that urges a person to neglect their rational approach to life and to completely give up to their subjective preferences and concerns, by avoiding situations that present certain amount of unrealistic risks to the certain person, while intuition is the quality that helps you to see and assess a defined situation as it actually is and utilize your personal qualities, strength, will, and resilience in the process of overcoming the eventual negative outcomes. Developing opinions and expectations for the future based on premonitions is usually a beneficial methodology that an artist can rely on, considering that premonitions are generally neutral and extracted from the intuition. Premonitions are feelings that cannot be derived on purpose, as your subconscious thinking cannot reflect on their nature, which is the aspect that distinguishes them from the standard form of the fear. An intuition that is reliable and can be safely trusted by the artist normally contains information based on experience, not expectations—it acts on proven facts and impressions, not on emotionally established assumptions. A normal intuitive feeling is a positive, comforting sensation that supports your self-awareness and belief in yourself, instead of the opposite. The characteristics of fear are the complete opposite to that of intuition. Fear always expresses information based only on emotions and doubts, and it always causes stress, anxiety, and concerns that are the reason for harming the healthy condition of a mindset and, therefore, negatively affect the efficiency and the success of any operation or activity undertaken with such a mindset. An artist must be incredibly careful when deciding to base a certain decision on a harboring fear. It is most certainly possible for you to anticipate and sense a real danger at some point; however, in most of the cases, it is highly likely that you are incorrectly judging a definite situation based on relying on an unrealistic fear. Considering the aforementioned, in order for an act to evaluate the exact specifics of the situation they are dealing with, they should develop the ability to decide whether or not a certain fear is related to an unrealistic subconscious fear that they might have. The artist should always be capable of acknowledging that certain fears are not realistic and helpful; as a matter of fact, the aforementioned can massively damage the development of a healthy professional mentality, as the unrealistic fears encourage negative influences, such as misinterpreting crucial situations that one might find themselves in. Obfuscating the difference in the essence between the unrealistic fear and the intuition can lead to a person subconsciously starting to dent their sense of reality in a highly negative direction, which will ultimately prevent them from taking advantage of choices and opportunities to expand positively their career and life in general. Hence, it is essential for an act to be able to carefully balance the accountability of the effect that fears and intuition can have on one’s career. Artists must stand firm against the possibility of developing a long-term fear based on previous particular experiences or moments that can negatively direct their actions, as the experience acquired from unfortunate past events act on your thoughts, not on your intuition. Failing to establish a stable mental protection against such tendencies, the artist can find themselves in a situation where their fears and prejudices can be an obstacle for achieving personal and professional growth of any sort.